


Scarlet Devil Mansion - Introductions

by SolidStateScouter



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Blood and Gore, Fighting, Gen, Touhou But Fucked Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 20:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10861665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolidStateScouter/pseuds/SolidStateScouter
Summary: Marisa meets a mage, and Reimu meets a vampire.





	1. Scarlet Devil Mansion - Library

The air is red and gross and heavy. It permeates every inch of Gensokyo, and every moment that Marisa spends breathing it clogs her lungs and makes it hard to breathe and hard to move. She had kinda just ignored it for a couple of days and relaxed at home, but then there was an... accident with some potions (they weren’t _supposed_ to be explosive!) and there was a hole in her wall so she couldn’t really act like it wasn’t there anymore.

So, using her amazing deductive ability, Marisa had traced the source of the mist to that creepy, definitely haunted mansion that had suddenly just appeared near the lake one day. Sure, to an outsider, it _looked_ like she had just followed Reimu and pestered her for about an hour, but they had just come to the same conclusion through their shared brilliance.

God the air is awful. It was like walking through a room filled with smoke from a failed magical experiment, except the room was all of Gensokyo and the smoke apparently made humans fall into a deep, nauseating sickness. So, Marisa had put together a rudimentary gas mask to stop herself from dying awfully on the trip there.

Marisa’s thoughts come to an abrupt end when she hears the sound of shattering stone echoing through the air, as Reimu continues to fight the gatekeeper. Marisa watches for a few more moments, admiring the thousands of shimmering bullets that covered the garden, a beautiful cascade of rainbow colors.

She’s almost jealous, but her attention strays to the unguarded doors, and her thoughts shift to all the things she could find in this... mysterious lakeside villa. It’s definitely haunted; things like this never _aren’t_ haunted. It looks _really_ old, too… who knows what she’d find inside? All sorts of ancient things worth stealing…

With a grin on her face, Marisa drops down behind Reimu and her opponent, and blows down the (impractically huge) doors with a flash of the Mini-Hakkero. With this new world open to her, Marisa flies in on her broom, into the darkness of the mansion.

The air here is clear, and light, so Marisa pulls her makeshift gas mask down around her neck and takes in a nice, deep breath. “Ah, it’s so nice to breathe in actual air,” she murmurs to herself, looking around. The halls are dark and unlit, so Marisa extends her hand and forms a glowing ball of light to show the way.

Glowing eyes at the end of the halls suddenly become visible, but the indistinct shapes behind them disappear further into the shadows. Marisa swallows, heart pounding in her chest. _This is so cool._ She should definitely break into old haunted mansions more often. Too bad Gensokyo is so empty. This is probably the only haunted mansion here! So she has to make this last.

Marisa takes her time, wandering around aimlessly and entering any closed door she finds. Every time, she expects some monster to jump out at her, maybe a ghost, or something, but all she finds are increasingly weird rooms. Some are pretty normal, with couches and fireplaces and little tables. Marisa quickly finds more fireplaces than there are smokestacks, though. Other rooms are filled with discarded furniture; shredded chairs, tall candelabras, even a shattered chandelier. She snatches some things, shoving them into her pockets.

As Marisa explores, deeper and deeper, feeling the constant presence of eyes on her, she begins to realize that there’s no way this mansion’s layout makes sense. The outside wasn’t shaped like this; halls branch off for miles away from the rest of the mansion, only to weave back to the main hall. Marisa opens a door, strolls through, and she’s exactly where she was when she opened the door. She goes from a hall to a room with a single locked exit without ever having passed through a door.

It’s terrifying and thus, extremely great. It’s been so long since she’s found something this interesting and fun. It reminds her of Mugenkan, almost. Those were really the only two mansions Marisa knows, and Mugenkan isn’t really haunted so much as it is in a terrifying place and filled with terrifying people.

Marisa’s sure the mansion’s filled with terrifying people too, though. She just hasn’t met any of them yet, unfortunately. She hopes they’re nasty in an interesting way, though, she doesn’t want a rehash of Yuuka or something. Well, that wouldn’t be boring, at least. It’d just be overdone.

She opens a door, steps forwards, and then realizes that the door lead to a stairway, as she promptly falls. Thankfully, there’s a landing, a little break to prevent herself from dying like that. God, that’d be humiliating, if she died by falling down a staircase in a haunted mansion. If she’s going to die here, she’d rather she was torn apart by a ghost or something. That’d be _much_ less stupid and arbitrary.

Wincing, Marisa stands up and brushes the dust from her dress, looking around. Unlike the rest of the mansion, which is impossibly clean and immaculate, this staircase was dusty. It was lit, too; simple candles on the walls that lit up the staircase, showing a long, long set of stairs that reached too far deep to see the end. _Holy fuck_.

Marisa does what anyone reasonable would do, which is jump on her broom and shoot downwards at the perfect angle as fast as she can. _Oh, hey, there’s the bottom!_ She can’t pull up fast enough, and she doesn’t even try, so she crashes the door, hits the floor, and skids for several meters.

She’s about to complain loudly about skinning her knee, but when she opens her eyes she realizes she’s in fucking Heaven.

The room she’s in is _immense_ , with bookshelves reaching up to the ceiling, almost too high to see. Each one is filled with books - not hundreds, this has to be _thousands_. Thousands upon thousands. Marisa’s smiling so wide that her entire face hurts, and she jumps onto her feet, bouncing in excitement. She had been hoping for something cool and interesting like this, but she hadn’t dared raise her expectations this high! She couldn’t even process the fact that a library this big, or that even this many books existed in the world! It seemed so impossibly titanic.

She stares in wonder at it all, running over all the possibilities, about everything she has to look through. God, there’s no way Marisa could even fit the time to read all these books in her lifespan! She’d have to throw away her humanity to accomplish that, a premise that’s never been as appealing as it is right now.

"Who are you, exactly?" A soft, deep voice breaks Marisa out of her amazement, and she pulls her eyes away from the massive, beautiful library. It takes her a few moments to find the source of the voice; a small, distant woman at a desk. Even when it’s this far, Marisa gets that feeling she gets whenever someone is glaring at her. “What the hell are you doing in my library?”

Marisa chuckles, hopping up onto her feet and grabbing her broom. "Oh, I'm just an ordinary witch! I came here 'cause of the shitty weather, but it seems I've struck gold!” She whirls around, gesturing to all the bookshelves. “You’re the librarian? The magician of this mansion? You have a beautiful library! I think I'll just browse, thanks -" She reaches out to a bookshelf, but the tips of her fingers are singed by a magic missile that soars across the room. _Ouch._

"There are no ordinary witches. We’re unordinary by definition," the girl’s voice rings through the air, and Marisa turns around to face her. She’s floating in the air, a large, heavy book tucked under her arm. She drifts closer, coming into focus. She has long, carefully cut purple hair, and is indeed glowering at her with intense, bright purple eyes. She’s wearing a cute, striped purple dress, and one of those hats that seem to be popular lately. “And don’t touch my books. I’ll ask again. Who are you, and why do you think you can just walk into my library and take my books?”

“Tell ya what! If you tell me your name, I’ll tell you mine! I mean, we’re meeting for the first time, right? And I’m definitely going to come back here, so we should get acquainted!” She floats closer, and lower down, but she doesn’t touch the ground. She’s actually taller than Marisa thought; even if she was standing normally, she’d be taller. As it is, she's about a head higher than her. Marisa offers her hand for a handshake, anyways. She’s rich, right? If she has a library like this? Isn’t that how you greet rich people?

The mystery purple witch stares at her for a while, looking at her hand with blatant disdain. Marisa drops her arm when it becomes clear she’d rather keel over and die than shake her hand. “I’m Patchouli,” she says, flatly. “Who are you and what are you doing here.” Her voice is a hoarse monotone that makes everything she says sound like a condescending statement.

“Well, uh, it’s nice to meet you, Patchouli!” Patchouli. Patche. “Patche. Can I call you Patche? I’m Marisa! Marisa Kirisame!” She puffs out her chest proudly.

“It’s not, and no. Marisa, get out.” _Wow, someone’s prickly._

Marisa shakes her head, and reaches out to take a book again. “Haha, no thanks! I’ve spent like an hour wandering around this deathtrap of a mansion, and I’m not goin’ without a reward! By the way, are you the owner of this place -”

Patchouli slaps her. _Ow??_ “I don’t care how long it took you. Get out by yourself, or I’ll drag you out.”

Marisa rubs her stinging cheek, and pushes the book back into the shelf with an irritated snort. She’ll come back to it later. Before Patchouli can say anything else, or slap her again, Marisa grabs her broom and smacks her with the bristly end. “I’ll take the third option, thanks!”

Patchouli stumbles back, slips, and falls. It’s all rather cathartic, but it doesn’t make Marisa’s cheek sting any less. She sits down on her broom, and then shoots up into the upper reaches of the library, taking a moment to appreciate all the books. “Come on, Patche!” She pulls down her eyelid and sticks her tongue out, “Catch me if you can, or I’ll take everything you have!”

The witch in question rises up from the ground quickly, with her book floating up in front of her, and Marisa gets the prickly feeling that comes with being glared at again. Patchouli’s book opens up in front of her, glowing with magic. She doesn’t say anything, but, almost instantly, lasers fire out from around her in the shape of a cross. Marisa barely ducks out of the way, and the laser punches a singing hole into her hat (one of many, at this point).

Extending her arm, Marisa makes a finger gun and aims at Patchouli with a shaky hand. She fires as many star-shaped bullets as she can, just as waves of danmaku fly out from around Patchouli. Marisa quickly loses track of her own bullets, so she continues to shoot more, flying through the hail of bullets and dodging the lasers, which were still sweeping back and forth.

It was a really sweet bit of magic, Marisa thinks to herself, absent-mindedly shooting bullets and failing to notice as they stray way off target and instead smash into bookshelves. As it fires up again, she focuses on the glyphs that appear in the air around Patchouli, etching them into her memory.

A bullet slams into her broom and almost knocks her out of the sky. _Ah, fuck, I have to focus._ Marisa points her finger at Patchouli again, and fires a thin, powerful laser straight at her head. Patchouli doesn’t bother to dodge, and the laser poofs harmlessly against a barrier that shimmers around her.

Marisa shoots again a few times, but the other lasers don’t do much better, unfortunately. As Patchouli’s cross-laser thing whirs up again, Marisa runs over the magic circles in her head again, and grins. “Hey, Patche, watch this!” She throws together the magic circles herself, but with her own little special spin on it, and then activates the spell card, which she had _definitely_ not come up with on the spur of the moment.

Her front laser fires out and shatters Patchouli’s barrier, while the other three… drag over the bookshelves and destroy several presumably priceless magical artifacts. “Oh, whoops, fuck. I didn’t mean to do that!” Patchouli’s glare is growing more and more intense with every moment. _Well, this isn’t the worst first impression I’ve ever made…_

That’s a lie and she knows it.

She pulls the Mini-Hakkero from her pocket and gives it a quick burst of magic, enough to propel her through the air at high speeds. She ducks under one of Patchouli’s lasers, and slams into her, like a beautiful, blonde comet. Patchouli makes a disturbingly pained shrieking sound, and is knocked out of the sky, slamming into one of her bookshelves. She regains her balance and floats up again, and then, as Marisa’s lasers move towards her again, opens up a barrier.

Marisa’s laser strains against it for a few moments, and the barrier cracks, but the spellcard gives way first, shattering around her. “Well, uh, that’s a new spell card, don’t get a big head! Anyone could’ve broken that!”

“KOAKUMA, KILL HER!” Patchouli’s voice is different, now, a loud, shrill, and terrifyingly angry shriek.

“Hey, hey!” Marisa raises her arms innocently, “No need to go to such drastic measures! And the hell’s a Koa -” She feels something on her broom, sudden unbalancing her, and she turns around.

There’s a red-haired girl with big, leathery black wings and claws. _Oh, that’s Koakuma. A little devil. I get it._ Koakuma kicks her in the stomach - _ow, heels! Heels!_ \- and knocks her from her broom. Air knocked from her chest and rushing past her, Marisa can’t breathe - she waves her arms in a panic, before managing to catch herself, barely moving to the side as Koakuma lunges down after her. Mini-Hakkero still in her hand, Marisa pumps it with magic to fuel a burst of momentum.

The force spins her around, and she slams her fist, backed up by the power of the Mini-Hakkero, into Koakuma’s face. The familiar is knocked to the ground, slamming into it with enough force to leave a crater. The shockwave blows over a nearby desk, sending paper and books flying everywhere. “Uh, sorry about that! It’s just that your master’s a major bi -”

Marisa is cut off by a fireball, which knocks her hat from her head and sets it aflame. “Ah, no!” She catches it, still struggling to fly without her broom. She waves the hat around, trying to put out the fire, as she clumsily dodges a few more fireballs. Her broom flies back to her - loyal as ever - and Marisa jumps onto it, setting her smoking hat on her head.

Patchouli’s readying up another spell card. Probably something with lots of fire. That doesn’t seem like the best idea in a library filled with flammable books. Wait, what is she even saying? All her books are probably fireproof. Regardless, Marisa twirls the Mini-Hakkero around her finger, and then jabs it forwards, calling on every bit of magic in her body.

“ _MASTER SPARK!_ ” _God, I’m so cool._ Her biggest laser yet blooms from the Mini-Hakkero, bright enough to blot out everything else in the library, a painfully blinding light. And then, it fires forwards, clearing the distance to Patchouli extremely rapidly. _It’s a laser, after all~!_

Patchouli shouts something she can’t hear, and a massive, burning sun-like object appears in front of her, blocking the Master Spark. _Great._ Struggling to stay on her broom, Marisa continues to fuel the Master Spark, attempting to overpower Patchouli’s magic with her own.

It’s not easy, though, which is bullshit. Marisa had to steal this unbelievably expensive, powerful, and dangerous magical furnace to get this much magical power at her disposal, and Patchouli’s matching it with her own stock. Then again, Marisa’s a young adult with no formal magical education, and Patchouli’s probably like a million years old, so it’s not bullshit, it’s just unfair. At this point, a magician like her is more magic than flesh. She’s probably got a magical furnace like this for a heart. That’s so cool, and Marisa’s jealous.

Anyways, at this rate, this isn’t going to go well. Patchouli’s fireball-sun-thing is overpowering the Master Spark, bit by bit, inching closer and closer to her. Given that Patchouli told her familiar to kill her, Marisa’s guessing she’s going to be incinerated extremely painfully if that gets to her. She’d rather that didn’t happen, though, if she’s going to die today, this would be the way to go. She’s being extremely badass, and so is the mage she’s fighting. It’s great.

Still, she’d like to stick around for at least a few more years, so she dips into the nearest source of magical energy. Which is her own body. Marisa tries (and fails) to ignore the pain as she burns up all her stores of energy and fat into pure magic, but it pays off. The Master Spark shines brighter, and the Mini-Hakkero flares with magic that knocks Marisa off her broom.

Patchouli’s big fireball explodes, and the explosion knocks over the surroundings bookshelves, and with them, Marisa, who ungracefully falls to the floor. Her broom clatters beside her, and she raises her head slowly. “Ow, ow, ow.” Her entire body hurts. There’s boiling blood bursting from and burning her skin. _Jeez._ She drops the Mini-Hakkero. It’s too hot to touch; her hand’s covered in burns, and she smells like a fucking barbecue.

That makes the hunger caused by her sudden absence of nutrition even worse, and she whines, rising to her feet shakily and turning around.

Floating in the air, at the same distance away, is Patchouli. Even from here, Marisa can see that she’s in bad condition; a hole in her abdomen, a missing arm, covered in blood and smoke. “Oh, fuck, are you okay!?” That wasn't supposed to happen - well, she did mean for that, but the consequences are only now dawning on her. The spell card rules are supposed to prevent this kind of maiming and killing and now she was going to die and everyone in the mansion's going to want to kill her, on top of Reimu, and -

 _Oh yeah she's a youkai, she can regenerate, she's fine_. Patchouli’s wounds are already regenerating. Her arm’s growing back, and the hole in her abdomen is disappearing. “Actually, you’re fine! Forget I asked that, it’s not important!” Marisa knows she sounds like a bitch but she doesn’t really care. She’s already ruined this first impression. She can’t make it any worse.

“So, is this over? Is that all? Cause I gotta get going!” Talking hurts, and Marisa tries to act like she’s not about to vomit up blood. She fails, and by fail she means vomits up blood and almost collapses. _Whoops._ With the little magic power she has left, she clumsily repairs her busted veins. She’s not great at healing magic - pretty shitty, actually - but this is better than trying to walk around and fly like this. _Probably._ She’ll get Reimu to do a better job after this is done.

A bright white laser runs over the ground next to her, and Patchouli lifts her grimoire above her head. It’s shining with a blue light. “God, you’re stubborn.” Marisa jumps off the ground. She has to end this quick, or else she’ll burn up all her energy and she’ll just be a sitting duck. She grabs the Mini-Hakkero from the ground - it’s cooled off, but it’s still warmer than usual - but leaves her broom.

She doesn’t need it, anyways. The Mini-Hakkero is already producing sufficient energy again, so Marisa calls upon it, fuelling another burst that propels her into the air, above Patchouli.

Patchouli look up at her, and Marisa burns up the rest of the Mini-Hakkero’s available energy. She shoots through the sky, straight towards Patchouli, like a meteor, backed up by all the magical force her body can muster. Marisa screams something that she immediately forgets, passes out midair, and then slams into Patchouli, and, with her, collides with the ground.

The resulting explosion knocks away the surrounding downed bookshelves and scatters books and pages everywhere. As the smoke clears, Marisa regains her consciousness.

Her arm is lodged up past the wrist in Patchouli’s stomach, which resembles a molten, bloody slurry. Patchouli shoves her hand into her face and pushes her away, gurgling and cursing under frantic breaths. Marisa stumbles away, vomits again, and then stands up straight, trying to casually wipe the blood from her mouth.

God, that sucked.

Marisa wipes off her bloody hand on Patchouli’s ragged, burnt dress, and then limps away, grabbing her broom and trying to ignore all the burning debris around her. Koakuma’s lying on the ground, in the crater Marisa had knocked her into, trying to rise up to her feet. Marisa walks past her, up to the bookshelf she had visited at the beginning, and grabs the book she had tried to take before.

"Yeah, I'll be borrowing this. You can have it back in like, eh... gimme thirty years, tops? I'll probably blow myself up before that." _If you don’t kill me first, hahaha._

Already regenerated into relatively working order, Patchouli manages to hoarsely screech, "IF YOU TAKE THAT BOOK OUT OF THIS MANSION I WILL GUT YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE!" from her crater.

"See ya, Patche." Marisa walks out the broken down doors and up the stairs.


	2. Scarlet Devil Mansion - Scarlet Sky

The sky is starless and dark. The only thing visible through the strange pall of scarlet mist was the Moon, shining unnaturally bright and red. Silhouetted against it, in the dead of night, was the vampire responsible for the incident. _Remilia Scarlet_ , she had said. She’s small, and if it wasn’t for the bright red eyes, the batlike wings, and the wickedly sharp teeth that glinted in her open mouth between sentences, Reimu wouldn’t have thought much of her.

Of course, even that’s stupid, thinking on it, considering how many unassuming, tiny people have given Reimu a hard time. She’s drifting in the slight wind, wings only occasionally flapping, glowing eyes fixed on Reimu’s position. At this distance, in this light, all Reimu can really make out are those eyes, staring at her, piercing and intense.

The two of them float there for a few moments before Reimu reaches down, grabbing a bunch of ofuda. She’s only barely moved her arms, however, when Remilia is suddenly in front of her, wearing a terrifyingly large, toothy grin. _Huh, so vampires_ **_are_ ** _as fast as Tengu…_ Reimu manages to quickly dodge to the side, avoiding a punch that would’ve hit her right in the face, but in close quarters like these, Remilia’s speed is more than she can deal with properly.

The next blow lands, a quick but powerful kick to Reimu’s stomach, one that instantly knocks all the air from her lungs. Thoughts jumbled in her head, she’s only faintly aware of Remilia moving in for another blow, but every instinct just screams _“Run away.”_ Reimu quickly flies back out of the way, faster than she thought she could move, opening up the distance between them again. Reimu clenches her fist on the ofuda she has bunched in her hand, and then throws them forwards in a quick, broad spray.

Remilia responds with her own spray of danmaku, a burst of multicolored bullets of varying sizes that blot out the darkened sky. Reimu takes a moment to collect herself and regain her breath before she weaves between them. Unsurprisingly, it was nasty to dodge, bullets brushing against her clothes and singing the fabric. It doesn’t help that Remilia’s a tricky target - she’s fast, and small, weaving between the waves of ofuda that Reimu throws her way, getting closer and closer.

Close combat isn’t really disallowed by the Spell Card rules, but it’s definitely frowned upon. Not that Remilia seems to care. If she had ridiculous strength like that, Reimu would prefer the melee option too.

Right when she gets close enough to throw another punch, Reimu pulls up a barrier. It takes the first blow, but cracks, and a snarling Remilia just pulls back her other fist to finish the job. Before she can hit it again, however, the barrier explodes in a spray of danmaku. Under the veil of smoke, Reimu directs one of the Yin-Yang Orbs up and over Remilia’s head.

Just as the smoke clears, the orb slams into the back of Remilia’s head, knocking her off balance. Reimu takes the opportunity to slam an ofuda into her forehead. Remilia makes a pained, strangled hissing sound, looking up at Reimu as she readies another wave of ofuda.

None of them hit. Remilia splits into a swarm of squeaking bats, each one expertly maneuvering through the field of danmaku. Each one shoots out its own little burst of bloodred magic at Reimu. Some, she dodges, while others she deflects with the gohei or one of the Yin-Yang Orbs. The bats swarm around Reimu quickly, snapping at her with little jaws, so she fends them off with another barrier, giving herself a moment to pull out another handful of ofuda.

The bats gather and reform into Remilia, who cracks the barrier with a kick. Instead of following up with another, however, she flies back and fires a burst of magic straight at her. Reimu can’t move fast enough to save her barrier, even if she dodges every projectile. Her barrier is chipped off, little by little, and as soon as it disappears…

A scarlet chain whips out of the bullets and wraps around Reimu’s wrist. She doesn’t have the time to process it’s there before she’s pulled forwards, through the hail of danmaku - Remilia pulls her into as many bullets as possible. She’s quickly face to face with her again, a moment that seems to drag on for a tiny moment before Reimu feels Remilia’s fist slam into her stomach.

 _Ow, broken ribs, broken ribs!_ Remilia then turns around, swinging her through the air, and throws her into the mansion. Into the mansion quickly becomes _through_ the mansion, and Reimu skids over the ground, splinters of broken wood in her skin. She kicks off back into the air just as another blast of scarlet magic vaporizes the ground where she had been before.

“What’s wrong, shrine maiden? I’m just playing!” Remilia’s smug voice rings in her ears, and Reimu catches her in the corner of her eyes, flying high above with the Moon behind her. “Come on, you couldn’t have beaten Patche and Sakuya fighting like this!” Reimu rubs blood from her face and scowls, glaring up at her.

She jabs her gohei at her and floats up further, yelling, “You’re not the only one who’s playing!” While Reimu can’t make out her face, she can see her grinning condescendingly in her head, and the thought floods her body with rage. She shoots at Remilia. The distance between them disappears way faster than Reimu thought possible, and it’s only when she’s swinging a kick at Remilia’s head from behind her that Reimu realizes she teleported without intending to again.

Remilia’s hat is knocked from her head, and it drifts through the sky, carried away by the breeze. The vampire whirls around, with a confused, surprised expression - before she can retaliate, Reimu kicks her in the face again, and then swings one of the Yin-Yang Orbs down at her head.

To her surprise, Remilia _catches_ it, claws scrabbling against the surface of the orb as Remilia forces it back, straining. “Heavier than it looks, huh?” Remilia just growls in response, catching the other orb as it flies at her with her other hand. Of course, that leaves Remilia herself open, something that Reimu takes advantage of, with a flurry of close-range ofuda shots.

What would be painful normally is agonizing for a youkai, and, hissing in pain, Remilia withdraws. Reimu doesn’t expect what comes next, which is Remilia _tearing_ the ofuda from her body. She doesn’t touch them directly, no, she just rips out the flesh where they stick. It makes Reimu a bit sick.

The wounds heal rapidly, exposed muscle and ragged skin turning back to soft, untouched flesh. Reimu grabs an ofuda to throw at her, but Remilia grabs her by the wrist. Then - _snap_ \- Remilia crushes her wrist in her hand. Reimu muffles a small shriek by biting down on her lip, an effort that quickly becomes pointless when Remilia rakes her claws over her cheek.

Reimu feels blood trickling down her face, and Remilia’s claws slicing through her brow, narrowly missing her eye. She tries to pull away, but Remilia pulls her back in, slamming her head into hers. Reimu’s brain rattles in her skull, and she stops thinking. She clenches her fist, gripping the purification rod tightly, before ramming it up and forwards.

Straight through Remilia’s eye. There’s another sharp, shrill sound, but Remilia doesn’t pull away, instead pushing herself closer, claws digging into her wrist. Remilia opens her mouth, fangs gleaming, and Reimu has a startling moment of clarity. _She’s going to rip out my throat._ Her heart pounds in her chest, terror grasping at her limbs. She’s not strong enough to pull away, but she has to do something, _anything_ \- thought gives way to instinct, again, and she blacks out.

When she comes to, Reimu finds herself in a place that is, happily, not Remilia’s grasp. She’s a couple meters away, ragged and limping through the sky. Remilia is hovering a few feet away, struggling and tearing ofuda from her skin, before ripping apart a barrier that shimmered around her. “You’re full of surprises,” Remilia snarls, turning around to face her. “I am too!”

She stretches out her hand, and in her arm, a long, bright red spear manifests in her grip. “HAKUREI! LET’S SEE HOW YOU STAND UP TO MY ULTIMATE ATTACK!” She puts a hand to her chest and rises up, flapping her wings. “Try dodging this! DIVINE SPEAR - GUNGNIR!” She hurls the spear at her, and it shoots through the sky to impale her.

 _God, what kind of self-absorbed asshole shouts out her attack names -_ Reimu stops that thought quickly, as soon as she realizes that this spear is absurdly fast. She teleports back, this time intentionally, just before the spear hits her. It bends in the air, turning to face her, and then shoots at her. Reimu dodges again, but it turns back to her. _Huh._ Reimu pulls up a barrier just before it hits her again, amplifying it as much as she can.

Even then, it barely holds, cracking bit by bit. The spear is followed by Remilia, grinning widely. “You can’t run away from this, Hakurei!” She pulls back her fist and shatters the barrier with a punch. The spear shoots closer, and closer, an inch from her forehead. _I’ll die. I’ll die. I’ll die. I’ll die. I’ll die._

The spear passes through her, like she’s air. Remilia blinks, expression contorting to shock. “W-what?” Reimu kicks her in the face, noting with an excessive amount of satisfaction that she’s knocked out a fang. Remilia pulls herself back towards her, throwing another punch at her - Reimu floats forwards, letting it pass through her chest, and then punches her in the face.

Remilia staggers through the sky, and catches her spear as it flies back through Reimu, who takes the moment to regain her breath and quickly heal her more serious wounds. It feels nice to be able to move her wrist again, even if it hurts. The spear must be a timeout spell card. “And what’s this?” she asks, voice dripping with evidently restrained rage. “Another surprise up your sleeve?”

“I guess you could say this is my ultimate attack,” Reimu grabs as many ofuda as she can hold, and bends barriers around them, ready to fill the area with bullet and bullet and drown Remilia in them. “It doesn’t have a flashy name, unfortunately. Nothing as fancy as Divine Spear Gungnir.”

Remilia fakes a laugh, and twirls the spear in her hand. She’s looking around, taking note of every barrier. “Hmm. Wow. You’ve really got a spread, huh? Are barriers your thing?”

Reimu grunts in the affirmative. She’s running out of time to use this… thing... legally, she has to stop screwing around. She releases every bullet she can, and Remilia sighs, before she shrinks down to the shape of a single bat, letting her spear fall from her hands. It shoots back up to pierce the barrier as Remilia, small and fast, dodges wave after wave of ofuda, squeaking.

This isn’t working. Remilia’s too tiny and too good at dodging. So, Reimu leaps forwards, throwing a kick at the vampire bat. Remilia flies out of the way, and in a small, squeaky voice, yells, “You’d kick a tiny, defenseless vampire bat? _You’re_ the real monster here!”

Reimu’s own bullets pass through her and shoot towards Remilia, who continues to dodge with almost contemptuous ease. “Come on, Hakurei! Surely you can do better than this!” She stops flying suddenly, as she runs into a barrier that had appeared right in front of her. Reimu whacks her with her purification rod, knocking her straight into the dimensional barriers around them… which proceed to shatter.

Remilia’s spear shoots down to her, and, in her human form again, she catches it and spins it around, backing off. It disappears, a moment later - timed out. And then - Reimu lets herself phase back in. She was probably pushing that time limit a bit far, so this is a good place to stop. Probably.

“So! Our ultimate attacks seem to have failed, huh?” Remilia spreads out her wings. “Well…” She clenches her fists, and then spreads her arms. “I still have a bit of something left up my sleeves.” Remilia glows, bright, with scarlet magic, which she allows to build up, slowly. “I am Remilia Scarlet! The Scarlet Devil! And this tiny little world you call home - _this world will be mine!_ **_Scarlet Gensokyo!_ ** ”

The magic that bursts out of her shifts into the shapes of countless, glowing red bullets. _Oh, great._ Once again, the sky - everything but the Moon - is blotted out by the danmaku, wave after wave after wave, shimmering and waving in the sky. Reimu weaves through them as best as she can, but they brush over her clothes, singing her and burning her skin.

The bullets wave and shift in impossible ways, in such a way that Reimu can only barely make out their positions. Some brush closer than others, ripping over her stomach or arms and singing her skin. Some hit harder - Reimu feels her already damaged ribs crunch further.

Reimu still manages to throw more and more ofuda her way, but Remilia dodges them anyways. She’s faster, still, and she has more energy to spare. Reimu doesn’t want to risk trying to outlast this; even if she does, that’ll leave her, increasingly injured and exhausted, to fight hand-to-hand with an immortal, ever-regenerating vampire.

She can’t let that happen.

Reimu shoots through the bullets, throwing ofuda after ofuda at Remilia while weaving closer and closer to her. Remilia dodges them, shifting her own bullets to wrap around Reimu, while leaping closer. Reimu doesn’t move away; instead, she shapes a handful ofuda behind her back, into a simple clone body.

She teleports behind it, and lets Remilia hit it. She tears through the duplicate, made up of ofuda, and squeaks in confusion. “W-what?” Reimu slams the Yin-Yang Orb into Remilia’s head, throws an ofuda into her face, and then - she pulls out her last spellcard.

“Divine Spirit. Fantasy Seal.” She moves around Remilia, even while just moving in a straight line, surrounding her in bullets of light and ofuda. The explosion of light blots out everything in view, blowing the red mist out of the sky, and knocking Remilia out with it.

Reimu touches down on the ground beside Remilia, as the scarlet sky falls to the ground, like little red droplets of blood. She ignores the screaming pain in her legs. “Remilia Scarlet, exterminated.” She tries to throw an ofuda at Remilia’s head, but her arm hurts too much to move it unnecessarily.

In response, Remilia grumbles and slowly rises up to shaky legs. They’re in a similar condition, now - wounds from a spell card like that wouldn’t heal easily, even on a vampire. She glares at Reimu, eyes smouldering through rage, and then raises her head, taking a long, empty breath. “Well fought,” she says, in a surprisingly even, steady voice. “I don’t accept this outcome, but… I’ll clear the sky,” she gestures to the already clear sky. “... Or you will. Whatever.”

“Don’t cause any more trouble,” Reimu bonks her head with the purification rod, “Or else I’ll have to exterminate you again.”

Remilia snorts, and turns around. “Mm. I’d like to see you try, human.” She flies up through the hole in the side of the mansion, and disappears within, not without turning her head to look at Reimu. “This isn’t over. You’ve cleared the sky, but I won’t bow to you or any other authority in this land. Remilia Scarlet will return, and next time, Hakurei, I won’t lose!”

_Yeah, whatever._


End file.
